{"id":801,"date":"2010-04-09T14:45:43","date_gmt":"2010-04-09T18:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/?p=801"},"modified":"2011-12-17T12:33:04","modified_gmt":"2011-12-17T16:33:04","slug":"response-to-pandoras-box-post-on-michael-feldsteins-blogblog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/2010\/04\/response-to-pandoras-box-post-on-michael-feldsteins-blogblog\/","title":{"rendered":"Response to “Pandora’s Box” Post on Michael Feldstein’s Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am an avid reader of Michael Feldstein’s Blog, but a recent post with a conversation between Michael and Anya Kamenetz<\/a>, kind of caused me to have an an “excess use of metaphor” alarm when I read it. So for two days I stewed and wrote several long critical comments – but then in honor of the TedXUofM<\/a> event tomorrow I decided to throw all my critical comment drafts away and try to make my point in a more fun and light manner..<\/p>\n

The Original Post: Should Pandora Have Opened the Box?<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is my response:<\/p>\n

I have written four different comments for this blog post and mercifully threw them all away. Now I have come up with this gentle formulation of my ideas.<\/p>\n

I start with this quote from the Wikipedia page on EduPunk:<\/p>\n

\u2026 Stephen Downes, an online education theorist and an editor for the International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, noted that \u201cthe concept of Edupunk has totally caught wind, spreading through the blogosphere like wildfire\u201d.<\/p>\n

Please read this carefully paying close attention to where<\/b> the so-called “edupunk movement” is happening.<\/p>\n

I actually have some experience with the word \u201cEdu\u201d, \u201cPunk\u201d and \u201cDIY\u201d because I am a teacher that is always looking at ways to fight the system and do things my own way. My son is in a Punk band \u2013 so I hang out with a bunch of young punk types wearing my black band T-Shirts and his band plays at lots of DIY music venues. SO while I am not an expert on \u201cEduPunk\u201d and \u201cDIYUniversity\u201d \u2013 I actually have some real experience in the underlying metaphors that you are borrowing from.<\/p>\n

I would suggest the following exercise to give you both a little experience in the sustainability of the Punk\/DIY approach \u2013 take a look at this web page:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.dodiy.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n

And go through and figure out how many of these registered DIY venues are still operating one year later.<\/p>\n

My son\u2019s band wants to go on tour this summer and they want to go DIY all-the-way \u2013 but nearly all DIY music venues close up shop after a few short months because they are a labor of love by some special person but then that special person becomes tired of spending their weekends hosting demanding out-of-town bands with a station wagon and a ratty trailer who bitch about the sound systems in the DIY venues.<\/p>\n

So the DIY music venues which are the hives of creativity and clever innovation appear and disappear and never get close to any kind of tipping point \u2013 appear and vanish sadly \u2013 way too quickly. It is clearly a movement \u2013 just not a mainstream movement and a movement that is uninterested in affecting the mainstream in any way. All they want to do is make a place where they can express what they want unhindered by \u201cthe man\u201d and in doing that they learn something about themselves and learn something about creativity.<\/p>\n

This is really sad because when you find and interact with one of these DIY music venues, it is a very freeing and very uplifting feeling and the people are so cool and fun and you so badly want it to be a \u201cmovement\u201d and you want everyone to be able to experience this. But sadly, they generally only exist for a short while after which they go away.<\/p>\n

Punk music at a DIY venue is like the most intensely creative group activity I have ever seen \u2013 the performers and the crowd function as one \u2013 there is continuous sharing and remixing of ideas and fluid group memberships \u2013 it is magnificent. It just does not last \u2013 it is sustainable as a concept \u2013 but no individual stays punk their whole life \u2013 it is the domain of the young who are experiencing it for the first time (and the scene-parents like me) who were squares in High School and so they are experiencing it for the first time in their fifties.<\/p>\n

And as I have said before, when you first experience this amazing freedom and creativity \u2013 you wish it were the future for everything. The bad news is that punk is not the future of all music \u2013 sorry about that. Sooner or later we get old and our tastes move toward the blues or some variant of the blues. But the super-duper good news is that if you have not yet experienced it \u2013 punk will still be there 20 years from now \u2013 it will still be alternative and underground and will be happy to see you when you get there and you will paint your nails black and wear black t-shirts and \u201chate the man\u201d with your fellow punk\/DIY hipsters.<\/p>\n

Bringing this back to your post a little bit, neither of you are Pandora, and there is no Pandora\u2019s box \u2013 and there was no \u201copening of a box\u201d that has brought into being some new profound sea change that we cannot undo.<\/p>\n

All that happened is that you noticed something that has been happening since the beginning of time and will happen forever going forward. You mis-interpret this marginal, small, continuous, alternative, underground, situation as something that \u201cjust happened\u201d and \u201cis coming to get us all\u201d \u2013 and a few pundits collectively named it \u201cedupunk\u201d so you could sell some books and sell some Google Adsense.<\/p>\n

By the way, you can take a look at Google\u2019s Keyword Value Calculator<\/a> to see the potential<\/b> value of the word \u201cedupunk\u201d in the advertising markets.<\/p>\n

According to my recent calculations, the word \u201cedupunk\u201d is worth about 0.05 per click and was entered 1000 times in the last month roughly generating $50.00 in potential ad revenue for Google last month.<\/p>\n

As contrast the query \u201clms\u201d is worth $4.14 and was entered 823,000 times last month roughly generating 3.2 million potential dollars for Google last month. A rough calculation of the variations on the \u201clms\u201d query says that there is a little over 15 million dollars total potential ad revenue for Google last month.<\/p>\n

If we do some multiplication \u2013 that means for last year LMS systems represented nearly 200 million dollars of potential ad revenue for Google and edupunk represented nearly $600.00 per year in terms of potential Google ad revenue.<\/p>\n

Just as another data point, the search for \u201cCharles Severance\u201d represents roughly $2016 of potential ad revenue for Google last year \u2013 roughly four times as much interest as \u201cedupunk\u201d. I have no explanation for this but a superficial analysis looking only at advertising revenue data might suggest that the “Charles Severance” movement is more real than the “EduPunk” movement.<\/p>\n

P.S. I am still looking for a DIY punk\/metal music venue in Nashville or Memphis for a summer visit. If in your research, you find one – let me know. Thanks.<\/p>\n

P.P.S. If you really want to see the world’s most awesome DIY music\/art venue in action \u2013 I claim it is in Lansing, Michigan \u2013 Basement 414<\/a> \u2013 I have lots of DIY punk video of my son’s band \u2013 I pick one of the earlier ones here \u2013 http:\/\/www.vimeo.com\/6153856<\/a> \u2013 their second concert ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am an avid reader of Michael Feldstein’s Blog, but a recent post with a conversation between Michael and Anya Kamenetz, kind of caused me to have an an “excess use of metaphor” alarm when I read it. So for two days I stewed and wrote several long critical comments – but then in honor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2831,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions\/2831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}